Split Decisions
by tremor3258
Summary: Admiral Revka has to deal with one of the most terrible crimes a Starfleet officer can commit during the Iconian War - inspired by the forum's Unofficial Literary Challenge 21.


By tremor3258

"Mutiny" prompt ULC 21 on the official forums -

Setting: Sometime around "Butterfly"

* * *

What was left of Attack Wing 36 continued through the long night of interstellar space. Lieutenant Sara Denisse had the conn on the _Prometheus-_ class escort _Salamis_ from auxiliary control _._ And she was regretting taking that command course, because she was also the only **qualified** officer to take the conn on board, which meant _Salamis_ was her responsibility. The status board was yellow at best – the main bridge was gone, both port nacelles out of alignment, weapons at forty-percent, and environmental had flatly refused to make any promises about long-term sustainability.

She was on her second straight shift, because at least the engineering department could run itself without her. Her quarters were tangled wreckage, so there wasn't anywhere to sleep anyway, with the whole ship full of refugees. Security had reported four major fights already and, she checked the repeater disinterestedly, three dozen screaming breakdowns, from people who would never see friends and family again. They'd been vaporized, or simply taken, through Iconian gateways, as they'd fought and died overhead.

She pulled up tactical – sections were shaded in low probabilities – _Salamis_ was relying on the _T'dell's_ sensor feed, and on backup crew, the communication link wasn't being kept stable. She'd have to live with Admiral Revka's disappointment for their low efficiency ratings right now.

Starfleet had tasked them to defend a group of colonists pending evacuation. Short-range shuttles had carried them all to one planet, and 36 held the skies while waiting for transports to transwarp in.

But while half their group had died, friends that had made it through the Klingon War and the Undine, the Iconians had gated below. Eventually, they reached the point where there were so few colonists they'd managed to board them on the remaining ships, and headed for the Federation core worlds.

But the transwarp gateway they had hoped to use to return to the near-safety of Spacedock had been found smashed, its defense fleet destroyed, all escape pods gone. Admiral Revka had come up with something crazy, taking advantage that, seemingly eons ago, Attack Wing 36 had been a rapid-reaction force. Most of the ships had quantum slipstream emitters, and synchronizing them all together, they'd managed to carry the others along with them.

Starfleet engineering would have a conniption about what they'd done to the emitters; they'd easily cut their life in half, and replacing them involved a baryon sweep. Still, their estimated life was still over twice that of a Starfleet ship in combat against Herald forces.

But even with the wonders of quantum slipstream, they were a long way from any friendly starbase that they could confirm survive. Just for her own amusement, Denisse brought up the strategic map. A dozen lonely stars – there'd once been mining and research outposts scattered, but if they'd had any luck, they were evacuated.

A chime came from the secondary tactical console. Denisse looked at the petty officer running it. He stared at it blearily. "The Admiral is calling all-ships, I think," he tapped the screen.

"Put just her on, I don't want to see the other captains," Denisse said, trying to straighten herself.

Admiral Revka appeared on the central chair of the _Trafalgar's_ vast bridge. The _Guardian_ class cruiser was showcasing all of its designers' aspirations, coming through so well. She apparently, damn her, had some sort of reserve of poise, projecting calm. Denisse felt a sudden, deep irrational hatred of snakes.

"All captains – _Franklin_ and the _Sharan_ are reaching catastrophic harmonics in their warp nacelles," Admiral Revka said. "Given the already heroic efforts of our crews, I will not attempt a warp field realignment at speed. There is a small red dwarf four light years from here, six-seven mark forty. We will take a bit of a break and rebalance our spare part stockpiles."

"Acknowledged, Admiral," Denisse said. She was apparently a voice in the chorus, as Revka gave a nod and then the connection cut.

Denisse looked at the strategic map, and even given the directions, took a minute to find the tiny speck. Apparently, it had only been remotely surveyed, with only a catalog number. They were in one of the lightly explored fringe zones between Federation members, off the trade lanes. And red dwarves were pretty common.

"Helm, you heard the snake-lady," Denisse said, "Move us with the group – pop out the dorsal nacelle if the warp field isn't biting into the turn, and watch the port nacelle's pressure – this isn't a Type 12, baby it." Helm normally piloted something roughly a hundredth the _Salamis's_ size.

"Oh, she may be hurting, but _Salamis_ has more than her left than you'd think Lieutenant," the helmsman said, looking at the youngster. Denisse was fine in the engine bay, but she was barely out of the Academy, and he had ten years driving birds.

"And yet, I see, you're doing the turn in five-degree increments," Denisse commented. She was too tired for backtalk, even friendly. She tapped out, _We couldn't fight a drunk blind Klingon right now – let's not go for machismo right now._

The petty officer hunkered down, "Sorry Liu-Captain, I forgot we had the repeater to emergency control going."

"Rikki? You're a decent transporter operator, but this isn't the holodeck – we blow up from pushing to far, we blow up in real life," Denisse said to the air. Ensign Rikki was _half_ a command course slotted, so was now XO by virtue of elimination.

"Understood, Denis- er, captain," Rikki said. "We're running the engineering repeaters up here with tactical, we got another coil in line and got the bleedoff capacity a little higher, but we really need to take this into dock somewhere."

"We are, it's a nice cozy red dwarf. Best accommodations around," Denisse said dryly. She wasn't aware of how right she was.

* * *

 _Trafalgar_ 's sensors quested out – the _Guardian_ class was the next-generation long-range, long-duration explorer based loosely on the _Odyssey_ cruiser, losing some of its bulk and capacities for high-precision sensors and specialty equipment banks. It could serve well as a surveyor in peace, or as a deadly combatant in wartime.

And at six light years, it was a half blind drunk snail compared to its smaller consort at gravimetric observation. _Trafalgar_ couldn't hold a candle to the _T'dell_ for long-range scouting. The _Intrepids_ were nearly built around their subspace resonance chamber and deflector assembly – and they took less than a fifth of the crew of a _Guardian_ to do it as well.

Still, Antonine always liked to have her crew trying to improve – someday soon, _T'dell_ may be pulled away or worse. And it was a practice session with built in anti-frustration features; as the little fleet's speed continued down to a smooth transition, resolution improved.

"We're confirming the gravimetric Doppler isn't occurring for the second planet," N'Karon said. "It's inside the Goldilocks zone, so the automated probe didn't look closer – if it's not a one-face, I'll degauss the deflector myself." The Klingon renegade paused, considering, "And scrub the EPS conduits."

"I may have to take you up on that," Antonine said lightly, "We'll probably be losing some engineering crew to the other ships, once we've got everything locked down and the chains of command figured."

"Not enough space even on this ship for that meeting," Chys'ette said, not looking up, "But if that rock has atmosphere, we pretty much any of the engineering staff can get some pressure domes thrown up quickly – see who we've got who we can spare." The Bajoran was technically operations chief, but was more operating as Antonine's captain of engineering right now, helping the engineering teams sort out their repair priorities and trying to organize R&R facilities across the fleet to keep Starfleet and civilian morale up.

"What about the Tiburonians?" Antonine said lightly, "Some of them were minors, they should be know the standard model pressure domes better than we do." Chys'ette cocked her head, then nodded.

Antonine was missing her old science officer again, but Captain Dunwen had her own ship now, keeping the salient around Krenim space intact. Keeping a head of a fractious science department had done well to teach the biologist how to divide up the workload to keep priority officers available.

"All right, still, let's not get people's hopes up – send our remaining frigate groups and the _Salamis_ in to check out the planet. Helm, we have three minutes until transition?" The ensign at helm nodded. "Commander Chys'ette – send a message to all-captains to gather for a meeting in sixteen hours, here for now, but that may change given the situation."

"Assuming it makes it out of warp," the Bajoran muttered.

The _Trafalgar's_ bridge was big, but not that big. "Most of their damage was on the alpha vector – her warp drive may need a realignment, but she's still got the best impulse drives, and most of her guns, and her balky warps should be less of a problem even in that star's tiny gravity well," Antonine said tightly. "It's our biggest gun, if it's a Herald trap, let's let the ships that can blast their way out without risking more colonists."

"Sorry, Admiral, but the _Salamis_ just hasn't been as crisp as normal – and not just on maneuvers. Anything over the voice circuit is slow," Chys'ette said apologetically.

"Lieutenant Denisse has had command for thirty hours and thought she would have it for twelve, at most," Antonine said, "Captain Takerra is still in sickbay, and she's the only other command-qualified officer left on _Trafalgar_." The flag admiral sighed, blinking, thinking back to when it was her and the Andorian, with a couple of petty officers, trying to keep a _Miranda_ alive against the Borg. Objectively, it was only two years ago.

"And _most_ importantly, Denisse has done nothing to merit having her torpedoed by having someone rushed to the center chair pull her out," Antonine said loudly. "Starfleet is having to pull deep against the Iconians, but I have trust in my fellow officers."

 _And_ , she thought to herself, _let's hope Denisse trusts herself_.

* * *

The _Miranda_ and two light _Rapier_ escorts flanking _Salamis_ close didn't look Starfleet in the light – the dull sun cast everything into a color that reminded Denisse of dried human blood. The planet at close-range wasn't exceptionally attractive by peacetime standards, either. The atmosphere was thin, but too cold to attract Vulcans along the temperate 'shadow' zone, and uninhabitable where it faced the sun.

The automated spectrometer routines weren't showing traces of high-value minerals, and the highest life on the planet seemed to be some spore-based plants. A low-priority colonization target at best. But in wartime conditions, all that desolation was a beautiful thing from her perspective. No gateways, no antiproton traces, no impulse trails from Herald ships.

"Environmental is using the transporters to pull upper-air samples. Nothing on the biofilter returns showing, so we're sterilizing and pumping it into the system," Ensign Rikki was reporting from emergency control. "We can refill the emergency canisters and hook deck seven back up, and even maybe figure out what's wrong with the thermostats in the cargo bays."

"Were they complaining again?" Denisse asked.

"Security had to stop a run on the turbolift – temperatures were fluctuation eight centigrade," Rikki said grimly.

"Well, I'd love to get my toolkit and hammer it into shape," Denisse growled, "But we've other problems." She tapped the sensors from the automatic probes. "Actually looks broad-spectrum livable. Maybe we should stay here, wait it out for a while. Damp out the warp cores."

Rikki said slowly, "I'm not sure how the Admiral would feel about it. We'd show up on a subspace sweep at this range. And you know better than I how this ship is all gun – we don't have much in the way of cargo bays."

Denisse said, "Well, we need to damp out the warp coil issues in the port nacelles anyway."

"Can you damp out the heat first?" came an irritated high-pitched voice from behind Denisse. She turned from the science console (such as it was) – the man standing there, from his jowls wrinkling into his complicated ears to a generous belly, was clearly a civilian.

"Rikki," she said, folding her arms, "Tell security they missed one. Close channel."

He peered at her rank pins, "Lieutenant, with all respect to your security, you have more important problems than monitoring the access attempts at your turbolift maintenance hatches. I am Governor Trellin, and while I have thirty people freezing and sweltering in your cargo bay, I have twelve thousand people scattered across your fleet."

He gestured at his ears. "I know we're out of warp now – and we're not at red alert. I request to know the status of my people." He made a move like a grab for her tunic, and thought better of it. "How many survived?" he practically hissed.

Denisse could see behind the governor two security crew coming out of the turbolift, looking hassled, but in full armor and with compression rifles. She made a subtle gesture for them to hold steady. "Governor, as far as I know everyone who was evacuated survived – Starfleet has no position on abductees' status, but finding them is one of the remaining war goals."

"Lieutenant, is there a command-grade officer available to talk to?" the Governor said, not backing down.

"I _am_ the commander of the _Salamis,_ Governor," Denisse said stiffly, "And am responsible for its people's safety. For the safety of others – I can try and connect you to the Admiral. If you will _leave auxiliary control_ and head to conference room seven past the first corridor intersection, I will arrange a meeting." At that, the two security guards came up to stand, silently, at the Governor's shoulders.

"You have ten minutes," he said, blusteringly before knocking past the guards to lead the way to the turbolift.

Denisse sighed, feeling her shoulders slump once he left. "Comm, get me Admiral Revka – let's warn her what's coming."

* * *

"Governor, I appreciate your enthusiasm," Antonine was saying in her ready room a bit later. _Salamis's_ CO had given the heads-up – she really needed to get a counselor report on Sara Denisse, but there were still too many problems to deal with. "I've had the medical groups compiling casualty lists and reports – we're trying to regather families as we can, and I've attached the information to this transportation."

"Admiral," the Governor said, "I am a Federation appointee, I have security access to see how bad things are going." He leaned back – slowly, he had that sort of dissipated look successful Tiburonians tended to develop, and continued, "I well understand we had to abandon what we had built to save our lives, but you have to do something on this ship. Even the air is stifling, and the captain's response just seems to be they're overloaded. And the ship lacks the sort of conference space to coordinate my whole staff on the civilians on board." He flipped the screen around – the 'conference room' was actually smaller than Antonine's office.

"Governor," Antonine said, carefully, " _Salamis_ was the last ship available for evacuees when your staff was the last to pull out. Rearranging the civilians more effectively is something I would like to do, but please consider two things. First, we are still performing an engineering evaluation – if we have sufficient ships capable of quantum slipstream, we are a few hours away from being to offload you. Second – the _Salamis_ is a warship, pure and simple, with little excess capacity for comfort. Who would you pick to replace your staff?"

She frowned as the governor gathered his thoughts. There was more wrong on _Salamis_ than it seemed. She really didn't want to cut someone off at the knees, but a little quiet encouragement was starting to seem a good idea. She came to a quick decision as the governor looked ready to speak.

The governor was quiet at that for a long pause. "A good point, unfortunately – can I route requests through your flagship? Tiburonians aren't a major part of the Federation, but our universities and technical programs are excellent – besides your cargo bays, this is pretty cutting edge – but power conduit's usually a power conduit, or we can help patch the microfractures."

That was an offer she was glad she hadn't had to make. "I appreciate it – we'll have an all-captains meeting in a few hours; we may be here a few days for repairs. We're as safe as can be at the moment. _Trafalgar_ 's at capacity itself with my flag staff gathering info – I can come on board _Salamis_ to help coordinate the Starfleet side with your people," Antonine offered.

"Did the camera not work? It's not great over here, Admiral," the governor said.

"Governor, the camera is working, but we have most of your agricultural colonists on board; we don't have room for your staff to come here," Antonine was sleeping out of her office currently. "But I can come there – my staff is used to remote coordination."

The governor opened his mouth, then visibly gave up on arguing. "All right, Admiral. I'll let the Lieutenant know."

"Thank you," Antonine said politely, "Please let her know I'll be there in an hour."

* * *

Sara gathered what there was of her staff to auxiliary control, mainly petty officers at this point, with the somewhat habitable planet on the main screen; split with the intelligence reports she'd coaxed out of the computers, showing the Federation looking _very_ patchy and the rest of the Alliance even more fragmented.

"You want to kidnap the Admiral?" Ensign Rikki said in disbelief.

Denisse rolled her eyes, "No – not exactly. If she's on board a Starfleet ship, no one's going to do close biometric checks of orders she sends out. Let's face it – the war's over, and it's clear we lost. Life support and cargo aren't great, but we've got plenty of power systems – we keep them on low, we're barely detectable, and we can at least wait until the Heralds stop killing everyone to surrender properly."

There was a lot of hesitant looks, she continued. "Listen – I know how tired everyone is – Revka's got us pushing a war with the Council that will get us all killed, flat out – I don't know what you all signed up for with Starfleet, but whatever Starfleet we signed up for is gone – all that's left is kill-crazy Klingons and Admirals either too old and stubborn to quit, or to young and afraid to fail." There was some serious nods at that.

"Just cut some orders for them to disperse away, then we just drop out – this system's unknown and has enough of a biosphere to keep us going. We'll ramp up the warp drive issues a little for why we're staying put and then get into the outer system and hide. Find the guys still listening to the Starfleet polish in your sections, we can beam them down to the planet. No one gets hurt, and the Admiral gets to lord over them without bothering us," Denisse said, "And then we're _done._ "

* * *

"Relax Commander," Antonine said as she manhandled a stack of PADDs as she walked towards transporter room 4. Chys'ette hovered nearby, uncertain. "You're in command until Takerra is cleared. Andorians bounce back pretty quickly once they're free of trauma. Most of the problems short of a Herald fleet, I'll be in the best positon to work with the Governor."

She shifted the PADDs again as the heavy transporter room bulkhead opened. "Just don't crash the ship!" she called, laughing, and stepped onto the transporter pad, setting her load down on the disc next to hers. "Energize, chief," she said, still smiling, as the transporter beam took her.

The heat hit her first; even to her, it was too warm to be comfortable, though she'd been living in blizzard conditions for long enough. The air was at least not stuffy, so the CO2 processing was still working right, but if they had this kind of heat, there were some serious problems down in engineering if the ship was on Starfleet's standard broad-environmental settings.

The transporter 'chief' was a crewman, and that was also a sign they were reaching – or Denisse wanted her to know they were reaching deep. There was a small boarding party, and the 'captain' was there as well. Antonine saluted crisply, and got it in return – humans weren't the easiest to read, especially the ones in the less pale shades, but Antonine was pretty sure she was tired.

Fortunately, handshakes, or something like them were pretty common – she offered hers, wanting to convey strength. "Lieutenant, well done on bringing your ship this far. I'm sure you and your crew are due for commendations, and will bring it all the way home," Antonine said with a smile.

"We've got our eye on that, sir" Denisse said with a hesitant smile. "The alpha vector isn't in shape as a command platform, but we've dug some space out for a conference room." Antonine nodded and gathered up her PADDs. She was a little disappointed no one offered to help she could wave off -

"Thank you," Antonine said, "This will be busy fielding complaints, I'm sure. But I did my time at an ops board myself, so until we can try and get the crews figured out, if you need someone to swing a shift, I'm on board and you have the conn."

Denisse smiled tightly, but didn't say anything. It was easily one of Antonine's top ten uncomfortable turbolift rides. And that was counting one with a strike team through a Borg hive; and one with some hungry Nausicaans in the Solanae sphere.

The governor, however, seemed pleased to see her. Several other Tiburonians, another ubiquitous human, and a Vulcan were waiting in the room as well – Denisse had managed to find several small workstations and it had a wall-mounted panel for viewing, and there was a window. Right now it had a basic overview of the squadron, and Antonine's engineering training translated the numbers at this distance into life-support and smallcraft capacity, without seeing the legend.

Denisse didn't enter, closing the door behind them, and Antonine held out a hand. The governor grimaced a little as he took it – understandable, Sivkans' carapaces were on the rough side for humanoids. Then he grimaced more, and shook his head. Antonine stepped back – if she was going to have to work with someone allergic to her, this would be a lot rougher. Then, she noticed the other Tiburonians doing the same.

"That's odd," one of them said, to a Vulcan, "EM density feels like an inhibitor field went up, nothing else gets in my sinuses like this."

Antonine, worried, looked down, but the top PADD she was carrying was blank – and tapping her transporter buffer returned nothing; so there was a _very_ strong localized inhibitor field, and across EM and subspace bands.

She checked out the window, "Well, it's not the Heralds disabling us – there'd be distortions visible to the native eye," she said. Also, weapons fire, but she wasn't mentioning it. She went to the edge of the room, with the indirect lighting, and held a hand up to it. "The ship hasn't gone to red alert, which could mean it is general – but the lights and I can feel the blowers are on."

She went back to peer out the window. "And I can't see overloads on the warp drives, so something in the repairs isn't causing problems," she said. "And this happened right after I came in the room, so it's probably premeditated." She gripped her hands tightly, furious at what the possibilities said/

"Mutiny?" the governor said, amazed.

"Actually, since Lieutenant Denisse was right here, I think the technical term is barratry, when a captain takes a ship," Antonine said, darkly, "What did I miss?" she muttered to herself, and started counting panels.

The Vulcan attaché said, "Logic would indicate a disturbed or stress reaction to a situation – Starfleet would never let one of their ships be taken, and the truth will eventually come out. Life support not being shut off would also suggest turning pirate, for example isn't the goal."

Reaching the sixth panel, she reached out and removed it from the wall – revealing the usual complicated tangle of equipment that did the real business of keeping a ship a functional system set. She did have to agree that keeping it aesthetically out of sight helped the state of mind, but it did make the isolinear chips she was looking for harder to get at.

She heard a yell behind her as suddenly her vision exploded- lightning down her spine. Her vision cleared gradually, her ears ringing. She held a hand up, and the fingers were slightly blackened, some kind of electric shock.

The governor… she thought, was shouting down at her, but she could barely here. "I'm sorry! We used that to get to the bridge earlier, they're looking for it now, I suppose."

Still trying to catch her breath, she sat up. It took three tries. "Help me over there," she said in her best Admiral voice, which sounded really weak and dry right now. It worked. Two Tiburonians grabbed her arms to lurch her over. Fortunately, what she was looking for was easy to find.

She swallowed a few times until it stopped feeling quite so arid. "Emergency oxygen –in case they pump in anesthisizine gas, since they know we know." Two lights next to it went red, and her throat felt dry. That had been close.

"All right, we need to get in touch with other ships and get out of this inhibitor field," she said, once she could speak again. "It would take some luck for this little communicator to do it on its own," she said, "But if we reach another communicator it should be fine. Hopefully, we don't have to take out the whole crew."

One of the civilians asked, "Would the crew support you? We haven't seen many – there doesn't seem to be much working on this deck."

That stopped her, "I don't know," she said honestly, "Or what all their plan is – but if they were just trying to go and maraud, and the crew was on board, we'd be dead. But this ship has three sections, it took a lot of hits so the officers are in the others."

She sighed. "My access codes could work, but that would just get in an attrition battle we can't win for the computer from here. Let's try the basics," she said, and knocked on the door. It was interior, not a bulkhead – and they could have a forcefield but then she'd have her equipment.

"What?" came from the other side.

"This is Admiral Revka," she said sternly, "We seem to be locked in and under an inhibitor field – please find an engineering team; there is a serious subspace leak."

"Yeah," came back, "The Lieutenant told us, you're in there so you don't get us all killed. Until we can put you somewhere safe."

"Admiral," the governor said, "How many flag officers go mad in Starfleet that they bought that?"

"No comment," Antonine muttered. More loudly, she said, "My orders are never intended to get anyone killed, if it can be helped. I simply do the best I can from my own superiors. Please let me talk to the Lieutenant."

She gestured, silently, to the Vulcan and the human, then pointed at one of the chairs.

"The Lieutenant showed us the written orders to disperse," came back more hesitantly. "I'm sorry, Admiral – I'm a fan, I saw that documentary, but."

"Crewman," Antonine said, "I was led into this room to help the civilian population. Starfleet isn't possibly large enough to protect every world, so we can't, but by concentrating our efforts, we've lasted longer against near-gods than we should have. I don't know what the Lieutenant's planning, but please let me out, or under Starfleet orders, I will consider myself a prisoner and attempt escape."

"Wait, sorry," and there was something too low to hear. "Sorry, some of the crew are being evacuated to other ships, I think. Admiral, we don't know what's going on, but… we're losing all the time now. That's not your rep."

She closed her eyes, stung. "Fine," she said, "I appreciate you doing your duty." She stepped away from the door, and at the chair being hefted. "This is not a fortified door," she explained, "We just need to get past the inhibitor."

"I know officers tend to carry special gear – you think you can stop the whole security team?" the governor asked, as Antonine got a shoulder in it.

"Governor, I'm Starfleet – Phasers and shields are powerful, but communication is the greatest tool, not violence," she said, sweetly. "Now – on three!"

The door buckled and burst – the two security officers were surprised, but to their credit, had their weapons already brought up… and hesitated at the Starfleet uniform. Antonine had been steeling herself, and even if her room had been taken, she still had kept the gyms free for everyone's sake, and she was briefly very busy. She did pick a weapon up and pressed the trigger experimentally – it just sputtered. _That_ would go against them, Denisse should have issued melee weapons.

"There will be a security alert almost _immediately_ ," she predicted, and started down the corridor, tapping her communicator, until it gave a burst of static on carrier waves. More hesitantly, the others followed.

"Admiral Revka to _Salamis_ computer," she said, "Requesting voiceprint crosscheck.

The communicator responded, with the usual pleasant female voice. " _Salamis_ reporting, Zulu four Beta Crosscheck"

"Admiral Revka," Antonine said, stopping at the cross-section – nothing yet, Denisse was very thin on the ground. "Alpha Alpha Alpha Alpha Seven, priority override to me."

The computer sounded a bit more urgent, "Priority override, command transferred on Admiralty authority. Orders?"

"Command lockdown below Admiral. Engage multi-vector assault mode," she said, "Vector Alpha command coordination."

"Command lockdown engaged. Warning – diagnostics of Vector Alpha show command circuits heavily disabled. This course of action is not recommended for tactical control," the computer replied.

The PA crackled on, "Admiral Revka, please stop – just let us go. Please."

"Acknowledged, engage anyway, and then bring up communications on closest panel," Antonine said. The deck lurched slightly under her feet as bulkheads closed and began drifting.

"Communications circuits have been locked down except for auxiliary control," the computer said apologetically.

"Not your fault," Antonine said politely, "Lieutenant? I hope you're still listening. I recommend you stand down before the _Trafalgar_ has to burn this ship out piece by piece when they come see why there are three ships instead of one." That got no reply.

* * *

Four hours later, Antonine was sitting with a very angry recently healed Andorian at her shoulder, back in a conference room on her ship. The other captains and the governor had gathered as well, but there was business that had become critical to deal with, first.

"Sir, we've had three doctors examine her," Doctor Vargas, the CMO of the _T'dell_ , as vaguely neutral in this, was saying, "It seems to be a stress based disconnect. We recommend a secured treatment facility for Lieutenant Sara Denisse."

"Very well, this will be forwarded to JAG," she said, "Any idea what sparked it?" That got back some shrugs. "All right, and the rest of the crew?"

"Still being examined. No signs of the sort of break – they believed in their captain when they said it would work," Doctor Vargas said.

"All right," she said, "We won't split them up at the moment, I don't need bad seeds or the efficiency reduction, but the _Salamis_ will need a new command crew."

"And a _lot_ of court martials," Takerra muttered.

 _Maybe we'll be lucky and this will have never happened by the time we get to a space dock_ , Antonine thought to herself hopefully.

"Sadly true. They have a responsibility as well, and their failure to recognize their captain's avoidance of responsibilities does _not reflect_ well. But we can't spare the time now – we still need to repair the plasma injectors on _Franklin_ , and get back to our business as proper Starfleet officers," she continued the meeting, but had to think.

 _How closely was that me, so many times? Just letting the fear taking me, and not thinking about how my crew depended on me, or the millions of lives behind me?_ She had to think. And pray it wasn't her or ever would be.

 _Trafalgar_ and its consorts continued their star's dull fire. Despite their best hopes, the war would have been and would continue, but for the most part, their honor had held, this day.

* * *

Author's Note: That's it for everyone- Antonine dealing with that most traditional of guest captains, the one broken by tragedy. Please review if you liked or if you didn't! Also, I think I finally got the line breaks to work properly.


End file.
